And Justice For All…

For those living working in Jakarta for the last 6 months, the city may not hold an interesting mood as everything was smeared by the gubernatorial election that was held between incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama or Ahok and Anies Rasyid Baswedan (who came out winning the poll result).

But the poll result was never really the case in this matter. All of a sudden we are living in a city where everyone is intolerant, where everything became a matter of religion, a matter of faith and a matter of belief. Muslim hardliners such as FPI and Hizbut Tahrir has been at the forefront of promoting a ‘Sharia-based’ Indonesia and has been two of the busiest organizations in the world (the other ones would be ISIL and Al-Qaeda, mind you) to promote hate-speech disguising through Islamic beliefs. Although the later was recently banned by the government, FPI (Islamic Defenders Front) remains vigilant with what they believe.

For many of us Jakartans who believe that the city should be led by forward-thinking and clean leaders like Ahok and his vice governor, Djarot, we are being heavily targeted to religious intolerance simply because of our indifference towards the case. Some people in this city have come to love their religion since they were born, and have also come to love their Christian governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, and some Muslim hardliners see this as a betrayal to the words of the almighty on the Holy Koran. But let’s not get all religious here, after all this is not the place or the medium. But we do want to remind you that to many of us living here in the city, religious tolerance and racial issues have been nothing but smoke screen us, we never really cared about it, because it never has such an effect to our lives. We have been living hand in hand together with people of different ethnicities and different religions all of our lives! And suddenly it becomes a problem now. Suddenly everything becomes a reason to call someone “kafir” (unbeliever/infidel) too very easily. And for us who have come to love this city, this is a very scary thing.

We have always seen that Indonesians are Indonesians whatever is the ethnicity, wherever they come from and whatever their religion may be. We have come to believe that democracy and progress comes hand in hand and is the answer to our country problems. How can we solve our problems when everything is still a matter of personal opinion and of personal view? When will we learn to separate our religious lives with our social lives? When will we learn that our business with God is our own and no one else’s?

If there are some things you can learn from recent happenings, it is never to believe anyone who mixes religion and politics. No, we’re not anti-religion and we have no hate towards whatever religion out there, after all, every religion teaches us the exact same thing, how to be kind and loving towards one another.

Our task is to be true to our faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith…

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About What’s New Jakarta

Established in 2006, WhatsNewJakarta.com has been providing events calendar, tips, guide & recommendations about living in Jakarta to the growing community of expats in the city. In 2010, the company expanded its reach to Bali with WhatsNewBali.com as a guide for both expats and vacationers in the island.
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